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Global Learning Project Ideas
Landscape and Life along the East African
Rift:
the Virunga Mountains, Rwanda
by Robert E. Ford |
Do you need to do a project related to East African environmental
issues? Here are some ideas that may spark your interest:
Project Idea No. 1:
Select a particular agency (or project), such as UNEPs GRID/GLIS
Project, CIESIN, EOS/Mission to Planet Earth, that is using new tools such as GIS/GPS/LIS.
Then answer the following questions:
- What does the agency acronym stand for?
- Who sponsors or supports the agency or project?
- What problems are they studying in East Africa?
- How and where do you access the information that the agency produces?
- Do you think that the approach this agency takes best exemplies
the integrated approach to problem solving used by "earth system science"?
- How can this information be used in policy-making?
Hint: You can find URLs (World-Wide Web) links to the above agencies,
and many others, and their activities under WWW
Links to Related Resources. There are also links
to projects from the Virtual Tours.
Project Idea No. 2:
Monitor a specific disaster prone country of Central or Eastern
Africa such as Somalia, Sudan, Zaire (D.R. Congo) or Rwanda. You may look at past
or current natural or human-induced disasters. Create a log of newspaper clippings
and other media/policy pronouncements about that country or event. Then evaluate
how well the media covered the emergency or problem. Also evaluate public-policy
pronouncements from the US State Department, the United Nations as well as from leaders
of Congress regarding your selected country. Then try to answer the following
questions:
How does the media and public-policy institutions explain the cause(s)
for the disasters? Are these problems linked in any way to other problems you've
read about occurring in the region, including,
- land degradation,
- global environmental change,
- international trade imbalances,
- deforestation,
- political conflict,
- desertification,
- biodiversity loss,
- population change,
- water resource problems, or
- environmental hazards/pollution?
What inconsistencies do you see between what is said in public
pronoucements and what is done by governments or international agencies?
How does the press cover these disasters and what impact do they
have on how the world responds?
What does the scientific community say about the causes of these
problems and what should or could be done?
What do you think can be done?
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